


T Minus 1

by Hth



Series: Numerology [1]
Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Queer Character, Canon Queer Relationship, Episode Related, M/M, Missing Scene, Pre-Relationship, it's not about patrick but also it's definitely about patrick, lowkey pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-03-30 21:33:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19035997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hth/pseuds/Hth
Summary: Nobody in this room thinks this is a seduction.  God, could you even imagine?





	T Minus 1

**Author's Note:**

> I love David and Patrick so much that I wrote -- not that? Somehow? By accident? But also it absolutely is that. Maybe think of this as a little slice of slow burn. Bite-sized slow burn.

Sebastien is busy prowling around behind him while he murmurs _physically..._ so that saves David the trouble of faking a look of surprise, although for verisimilitude, he does keep himself from rolling his eyes. “Oh,” he says flatly. “Well. I shouldn't.”

 

If he sounds unconvincing, all the better. He's obviously here for exactly that, and thanks to Sebastien's monumental ego, that's all the cover story David needs. Unfinished business.  _Exploring his pain_ , for fuck's sake.

 

He should be insulted, and to some degree, he is. But it's not the first of Sebastien's insults David has choked down.

 

Well. To be honest, lapped up.

 

“Oh, you should,” Sebastien says. He's not trying very hard to seduce David – another layer of insult, David supposes, although honestly he's fine with just skipping past the will-they-won't-they. Nobody in this room thinks this is a seduction.

 

God, could you even imagine? It's literally impossible to be seductive in this sad relic of a motel; David assumes you could bring a sure thing here, and he knows from experience that you can kind of – fall into something ill-advised, but as for temptation – enticement – allure –

 

Maybe it's the fluorescent lighting. Maybe it's just this town.

 

Maybe it's David. When he thinks about being seduced, he mostly just feels...tired. Too old for it, or too – mature, or something. He has real things on his mind now. Invoices and grant applications and black mold in the storeroom and liability insurance and other unsexy concerns that never go away, even now that David has someone on staff specifically to manage the boring parts of opening a business.

 

No. That's not a road he's going to let his brain go down at this particular moment. It's Sebastien he's here with right now, not – anyone else.

 

“Okay, fine, but I can't stay,” David says.

 

It feels unexpectedly – final. This is why he's here, but it's like some part of him is surprised that he's really going to go through with it – didn't really believe it was real until the words were in the air.

 

But they are in the air, now, and Sebastien purrs in self-satisfaction, his hands settling on David's shoulders and squeezing. David feels.... Something? Nothing?

 

So pretty much the same thing he's always felt for Sebastien – something and nothing at the same time, because Sebastien was always somehow intriguing and boring in about equal measure, and all indicators are that he hasn't changed a bit in the last four years.

 

He still underestimates David. Maybe, David thinks with a slight charge of self-satisfaction all his own, that won't be true after tonight.

 

David is  _conducting a heist_ . That's the sexiest thing that's likely to happen in this room all night. If David has to be in charge of his own seduction, he at least has that to fall back on, so he channels his inner Danny Ocean and turns around so he can wind his fingertips in the collar of Sebastien's ratty t-shirt and jerk him down into a kiss.

 

They both tilt into it automatically, the angle still strangely familiar, and David feels an abrupt flutter of panic as Sebastien parts his lips, his tongue pressing softly against David's lip, asking permission. He didn't factor in – he forgot how –

 

He had a few good reasons for dating Sebastien Raine, mixed in among roughly a thousand shitty reasons, and one of them was that Sebastien is a very, very, very good kisser. David curls both hands around the base of Sebastien's skull, stretching up into the kiss hungrily, and with his eyes closed they don't even have to be in this godforsaken motel anymore. They're on a first-class flight to Morocco, wrapped up together in the same oversized sweater against the lifeless chill of the recycled air, Sebastien's tongue teasing over the burnt texture of David's chapped lips – they're hiding in a corner of the gallery, trading the salty tang of olives back and forth between their mouths while they should be mingling with buyers – they're shoved together in the shelter of a half-sized phone booth out behind a gas station, their hands inside each other's coats and their pockets full of Red Vines and rolls of film, on a road trip to the Chesapeake Bay because Sebastien is abruptly fascinated by fishing communities and desperately needs to photograph dozens of them.

 

They're in better places – places that don't smell faintly of grease and dogs and cigars, where the wallpaper isn't peeling and the toilet next door isn't running. They're in better times – back when David was charmed by Sebastien's penchant for off-road adventuring, and Sebastien couldn't seem to get enough of kissing him.

 

It's all pure bullshit, but it's nice to pretend.

 

Which is on-brand for their whole relationship, actually.

 

“David,” Sebastien says breathlessly, pulling back just far enough to get his hands between them, tucking eight fingers inside the waistband of David's jeans, his thumbs circling over the button. “I really have missed you.”

 

“You know I don't believe a word you say, right?” David says.

 

Sebastien smiles at him and leans back in, nosing affectionately at the corner of David's lips. “I never lied to you, David.” David makes an involuntary noise of you've-got-to-be-fucking-kidding-me, and Sebastien has the gall to sound wounded when he says, “But I didn't. You always knew who I was. And I always knew who you were. I think that's the part I miss. The sex I can get anywhere, but most people are so self-deluded, you know? They're not like you and me. They can't see what we see, even when I take a picture and put it right in front of them. They only see their own cherished illusions. Did you ever have an illusion in your whole life, David?”

 

Did he? Does he? If he did, how would he know it? “Is that how you convinced yourself you weren't using me? By deciding that I knew all along what you were really doing?”

 

He doesn't expect it to strike deep, but Sebastien's eyes narrow in an uncharacteristic expression of annoyance, so it must come close to – whatever is under Sebastien's skin – whatever occupies the space where ordinary mortals keep their hearts. “Do you really want to talk about who was using who? You made a lot of money off of me, David.”

 

David shrugs, letting the motion draw his arm upward to hook his elbow behind Sebastien's neck. “Probably,” he admits. “I don't know, I was terrible with money.”

 

“You're good at this, though,” Sebastien says as he lets himself be pulled back in.

 

“I know,” David murmurs.

 

He closes his eyes, and this time they don't teleport away from the motel. This time David is keenly aware of the low electrical buzz coming from the mini-fridge, and the creak of leather as they shift against each other, and the wet sound of their mouths pressing closer and then drawing back, a slow and steady pulse that's exactly what David remembers it was like to fuck Sebastien –  _slower, slower_ , he remembers Sebastien imploring (ordering?), stretching his arms up over his head to grip the headboard, his ribs standing out as he arched his back,  _this feels so good, want it to last, keep going just like that, David, you're perfect_ \--

 

_No illusions_ , Sebastien has the unmitigated gall to say to David's face now.  _I never lied._

 

God knows what  _David, you're perfect_ turns into when you run it through all of Sebastien's lenses and filters, but to the naked eye, it's an obvious, shameless lie and always was. David always knew, he always  _knew_ , but he still....

 

The thing he and Sebastien always had in common was, they both love art and hate reality, and you can't have two people like that in the same relationship, or the whole thing just turns into an insane house of mirrors. Even when things were good between them – maybe especially when things were good, it was all just so – fucked, just this twisted pile of lust and melodrama and competition and promises that came practically pre-broken, with nothing and no one to hold their feet to the ground, to keep them honest.

 

Sebastien is a liar, but so is David, and for so many of the same reasons. Mainly for the aesthetic.

 

When he leans around Sebastien to flick the light off, the sudden darkness creates an empty canvas, and all too clearly, David can picture the same face that's been on his canvas every time the lights go out for weeks – Patrick Brewer's face, even and handsome, soft-edged and open, with his big eyes that seem to smile affectionately no matter what the rest of his face is doing. Like somehow even when he disapproves of what David's getting them into, he simultaneously approves. Of David.

 

Patrick is – his friend? David thinks this is what normal friends are like. He thinks they're supposed to – just like you, the way Patrick seems to like him.

 

“Hey,” Sebastien says softly, taking hold of David's chin with his thumb and forefinger for a moment, before David pulls out of his grip. “I don't like you being distracted.”

 

“You're not the center of the universe, you know,” David says. “I told you, I've been busy. I have – things on my mind.”

 

“Things,” Sebastien repeats archly. “People?” David shrugs. “A person? Are you seeing someone, David?”

 

“You wouldn't care if I were,” David says.

 

In the darkness, he can just see the motion of Sebastien's smile, but he can clearly hear the toothiness, the bite in Sebastien's voice as he says, “I'd care.”

 

“You would,” David realizes out loud, appalled and – weirdly admiring. Sebastien is just so consistently – exactly the person that he is. It's an achievement, sort of? “You'd get off on this even more if I were cheating with you.”

 

Sebastien kisses him twice, kisses he fires off like bullets, and slides his hands over David's chest til they meet in the middle. “The idea has a certain transgressive appeal.”

 

“Well, too bad for you,” David says shortly. “There's no one. We'll have to think of some other way to be transgressive.”

 

_There's no one_ is better than  _I'm not seeing anyone_ . It's better if Patrick doesn't even exist, if David can flip a switch and make it so that there isn't any such person – so there's no one in the world who's kind and steady and snarky and pragmatic and sincere, who has absolutely no aesthetic at all and lives his life fully on solid ground, fully inside his own skin.

 

Functionally speaking, there isn't any such person. Not for David, there isn't.

 

For David, at least tonight, there's Sebastien Raine or else there's no one.

 

Sebastien pushes David's jacket off while steering him toward the bed, and when he pushes on David's chest, David lets his gaze and his muscles all go soft, lets himself fall to his back. He wishes he'd planned ahead enough to be high, or even just a little bit drunk – just enough to make him not mind the little things so much, like how the mattress springs press uncomfortably into his back, or how there's never any graceful way to unlace your boots when you're trying to get naked in a hurry, or how in spite of how much he wants to believe that he's better than a selfish narcissist like Sebastien, there's entirely too much truth in  _other people aren't like you and me_ .

 

He doesn't quite know what to do with his hands when Sebastien kneels up over his thighs and strips off his own shirt, dragging the process out a bit more than necessary. It's still dark, but David's eyes have adjusted now to the dim lighting from the bathroom and from the parking lot lights outside. He can see as well as he needs to. He can see all too well.

 

Sebastien braces his hands on either side of David's head and leans down, in control now, stroking his tongue along David's with no pretense of asking permission. “Do you remember Elijah Strickland's houseboat party?” Sebastien murmurs, his mouth sketching the shape of the words against David's mouth.

 

It's not really a question; the certainty hums in his voice. David remembers, and Sebastien knows he does. “What about it?” David says, which is technically a question and not a statement, and a question can't exactly be a lie, even though this one is the opposite of honest.

 

“You broke up with me,” Sebastien says, warm and amused.

 

“I let you talk me out of it,” David says dryly. “One of those decisions was a huge mistake.”

 

Sebastien kisses his way down David's neck, entirely too softly, as if he's lost in a sepia-toned, nostalgic haze. “I knew you didn't mean it. You just like making dramatic gestures when you're upset.”

 

“I very much meant it,” David says, a little annoyed even now, but willing to be placated by the way Sebastien sucks on the point of his collarbone. “You tied me up while I was passed out and took pictures of me.”

 

Sebastien chuckles, his breath hot on David's skin. “You make it sound like I kidnapped you. It was one little piece of rope around your wrists, and the pictures were stunning.” David snorts, and suddenly Sebastien surges up over him so they're nose to nose. David's breath catches; it's been a long time since he was the one pinned down by that particular intensity in Sebastien's gaze. It's the kind of experience you always assume you're misremembering, even when you're not. When it's exactly everything you remember and more. “You never understood how stunning you were back then. Every picture I took of you was like a self-contained universe, like a brand new novel of its own. If you hadn't fought me every step of the way, you could've been the muse I've looked for my whole life. Of course, if you didn't have so much fight in you, the camera wouldn't have had so much to uncover.”

 

David doesn't know what that means, if it means anything. He threads one arm under Sebastien's arm and draws his nails lightly over Sebastien's back. “Back then,” he repeats.

 

Sebastien shrugs with one shoulder. David can feel a dozen lean, defined muscles shift in concert under his fingertips. “I think you're aging well,” he says,  _infuriatingly_ . “But you have lost something. I don't see the same fire in you that you had in your prime. It seems like you've gotten cynical.”

 

It's baffling to David that there was once a time when Sebastien  _didn't_ see him as cynical. “I thought you said I had no illusions.”

 

“But you had dreams,” Sebastien says, and David hates how soft it sounds, how _compassionate_. Where does Sebastien Raine, of all people, get off pretending to experience empathy for another human being? “You _wanted_. You always wanted, David. So very deeply, so desperately.”

 

David can't help scowling, but he's not here to fight with Sebastien, so he makes himself swallow that down, less like a razor blade than a teeny-tiny needle. It only leaves pinpricks of blood behind, and he doesn't say,  _I was never as desperate as you wanted to think I was_ – just like he always swallowed down Sebastien's sparkling, prismatic insults and opened his blood-flecked mouth for more kisses.

 

Just like he does now, too.

 

He can't even blame the photographs, not really. Sabotage may be the reason he chose to come here, but it's not the reason he likes this so much – likes Sebastien's hand sliding up his body, nimble fingers twisting and tugging at his chest hair, likes Sebastien's tongue lapping up David's neck to the rhythm of his pulse, likes the way Sebastien's narrow waist and hips still fit perfectly between David's legs. That's just because....

 

Because David has always had a high libido and low standards? He used to think so, but the truth-- The truth is that since he left Toronto, he hasn't really had sex the way he used to, and the truth is, he doesn't miss it the way he thought he would. He  _misses_ it, misses the thrill of being on his knees in wildly inappropriate places, misses the sensuality of someone's hands other than his loosening his clothes and burying themselves inside, misses the way the world always seemed less impossible to manage when he was drifting in the afterglow with a body or two flung across him, nuzzling into his shoulder. Misses feeling like a functional adult who has pride and isn't thirty-four years old and sleeping in a twin bed next to his sister. Misses those moments of orgasm when he snaps into his own body, totally forgetful of the most important thing in the world: what everyone else thinks of him.

 

But it's unexpectedly relaxing, too. He didn't realize until he stopped how utterly exhausting it all was – chasing and being chased, managing his own expectations and everyone else's, trying to find his footing on the ever-shifting scale between  _cold, catty bitch_ and  _oh my god, he's so needy, you're kind of like, embarrassed for him?_ There's so much he doesn't miss at all.

 

So if it's not that, if he's not boiling and melting under Sebastien's hands because it's just been too damn long since he's had this at all, then the depressing truth is that there's something about  _Sebastien_ that still has the power to bring this out of him, and David did not need to know that about himself.

 

He interrupts a kiss by digging his fingers into Sebastien's curls and pulling his head away. Sebastien hums in pleasure, but David's not here to talk about that right now. “Can we just fuck, please?” he gripes. “I don't see the point in pretending we're still boyfriends.”

 

Sebastien gets close enough to flick David's lip with the tip of his tongue. “Oh, David,” he says. “It's so sad that you close yourself off from this kind of pleasure just because--”

 

“Just because we don't like each other very much? Yes, it's tragic.”

 

It's pointless, of course. Sebastien goes right back to kissing him, and if anything he's doing it slower now, intimate and hungry and – invasive, in ways that David's brain stringently objects to, even if his body sees no grounds for complaint. He should've known better than to tell Sebastien not to do something. All he accomplished was to go and make it  _transgressive_ .

 

Sebastien puts a hand alongside David's face, the tips of his fingers stroking a warm, ticklish line from in front of David's ear to the bolt of his jaw, then pausing there to massage against the grain of his stubble. “I know, I know,” Sebastien moans, the perfect level of sincerity that David recognizes immediately as performance. “I know I shouldn't, but your mouth is irresistible. How many times did we do this even before we were quote-unquote  _dating_ ?”

 

Every time, David's pretty sure. When they barely knew each other by more than name and reputation, Sebastien would still always blow in and out of his life with at least one kiss to remember him by. It worked, too.

 

David gets a good, solid grip on Sebastien's hips and heaves him off, sending them in a tangle of body parts up against the edge of the mattress. He throws his hand up to grab the headboard, anchoring them both, and Sebastien laughs breathlessly, latching an arm tight around David's waist. “My hero,” he teases.

 

“If you can shut up for half a second, I might be willing to suck your dick,” David says, and Sebastien smiles like it's no more than he expected and opens his legs wider.

 

There's a moment – David's virtually sure there's a real, legitimate moment – when he almost doesn't go through with it. The blood roars in his ears and the hairs rise on the backs of his arms and his cock is hard and he wants to cry at the unexpectedly possessive way Sebastien's fingernails brush back and forth over the small of his back, and it all feels so wrong. He wants Sebastien, he always has and he probably always will, but this isn't Toronto and it isn't Chicago and it isn't Fez and it isn't Chesapeake Bay, and it isn't five years ago when David was the person who just wanted people to think he was good enough, hot enough, _relevant_ enough to be Sebastien Raine's lover.

 

This is Schitt's Creek, and nobody here gives a good goddamn about Sebastien Raine. Involuntarily, David imagines trying to explain this at work tomorrow, over reubens in paper boxes and a stack of shared napkins on a lunch break – trying to explain to Patrick what he's doing right now, what he's _thinking_ , how he was clever enough to come up with this and sexy enough to pull it off – and it just fails, he can't make it come together even in his imagination.

 

It doesn't feel like a conquest, when he imagines telling Patrick about it. It feels like prostitution.

 

But – it's not, though, or at least it's the empowering kind of prostitution, not the sad, scary kind. David does want this. He wants Sebastien, or at least Sebastien's cock, or at least Sebastien's cock for tonight.

 

And maybe mostly, he wants Sebastien to be, just once, the one who regrets it in the morning.

 

That might be the part he's afraid of Patrick finding out. It sounds so – bitter and bitchy and mean-spirited, and if they're going to be friends, it feels like Patrick really should think that David is – not those things.

 

He's not really completely sure what Patrick thinks of him, truthfully. But Patrick does seem to smile at him a lot. That's a good sign, right? That's how normal, decent human beings signal that you're passing the tests. That they want you to stay.

 

He wishes he weren't thinking about Patrick when he closes his fist around the base of Sebastien's cock and his mouth around the head of it.

 

He seems to be wishing a lot lately that he weren't thinking about Patrick. It's getting a little out of hand.

 

When a burst of precome hits his soft palate and drips down onto the back of David's tongue, the dial in his brain starts to slip between channels, turning everything staticy at the edges, and then to watery white noise. He has missed this, after all. In a lot of ways, he has. He strokes the thin skin inside of Sebastien's thigh and feels pulse and fluttering muscle and damp heat, all the signs of desire, and it feels so good, so fucking good to be desired again. Like he was  _in his prime_ (and oh my god, fuck Sebastien forever for  _that_ ).

 

And maybe none of this belongs here, maybe it would've been better to leave it all in his old life and move forward like a functional adult, but--

 

The version of functional adult that David is in his new life, in the present, is – a little warmer than his old self, a little more emotionally honest, a little better at regulating his emotions, at setting goals and sticking to them. He's an improvement in almost every way from the self-conscious neurotic who cried until he threw up mall pretzel when Sebastien Raine got bored and left him, but he's still – lonely.

 

He's really fucking lonely.

 

As a matter of fact, it's possible that he always has been. That he doesn't have any real memories of what it feels like to be anything other than lonely. That Sebastien (fuck him forever) knows exactly what he's talking about when he says that David's spent his whole life  _desperate_ and  _deeply wanting_ . 

 

Sebastien's fingers stroke the back of his neck and up into his hairline. It's not love – it's not warmth or intimacy or friendship or even desire, really. It's nothing at all. It's just Sebastien.

 

“Do that again,” David murmurs, his lips brushing the tip of Sebastien's dick, and he presses his eyes closed and gets what he asked for and hates himself for asking and swears this is the end, this is the last time, he'll get religion or something, he won't ever, ever do this again.

 

He won't ask to be lied to. He won't pretend that the fact he's lying, too, somehow cancels it out and makes it okay. He's already become a better person in almost every way, and he can be better like this, too – less cynical, more – sincere.

 

But in the meantime. He's here now.

 

“Do you like your life?” he asks Sebastien in the darkness when it's all over, when his hand and his belly and his thighs are tacky with come and so are Sebastien's, when they're pressed face-to-face in the middle of the mattress, sharing a pillow, sharing breath.

 

“You know I do,” Sebastien says. “That's why we broke up, David. I love my life. You barely tolerated it.”

 

“Barely tolerated my life or yours?”

 

Sebastien huffs something that's unsettlingly like a genuine chuckle. “Either. Both. You barely tolerated everything.” He brings up a hand and touches the back of two fingers to David's face, leaving them resting there, impossibly gentle. “Including me.”

 

“That's not true,” David says. “I mean, it is now, but at the time I was actually pretty attached to you.”

 

“David. You never cared about me. You wanted to be me.”

 

It's not outside the realm of possibility. “Nothing ever hurts in your world, does it?” David whispers, stretching forward just the half-inch necessary to press a kiss to Sebastien's forehead.

 

Sebastien gives him half a smile, his eyelids already fluttering shut. “No. There's no such thing as pain. There's only ugliness and art.” His fingers find David's arm in the dark, crawling downward to wrap firmly around his wrist. “Can I change your mind about staying the night?”

 

“I don't know,” David lies lightly, easily. “I already got what I came here for.”

 

*

 

It's past noon, but David's still wearing his sunglasses when Patrick comes from the post office, balancing two small boxes on top of a large one. “Are you making a run to Elmdale?” he's already saying as he backs through the door. “Because we should add a hand truck to the hardware store list-- Whoa, hey.”

 

“Hm?” David says, glancing up from the sketchpad where his diagrams for potential wall displays have devolved into silly doodles of yachts.

 

Patrick is smiling at him, with only a hint of mockery. “Either I should expect the paparazzi at any minute, or you had a hell of a night.”

 

“Oh,” David says when he catches on, and he nudges the sunglasses up his nose, feeling awkward. “I... was up late.”

 

Patrick produces his Swiss army knife from his pocket and begins slicing into the first box, and he's either not looking at David at all or just eyeing him sidelong, it's hard to tell from this angle. “Big date?” he asks mildly.

 

“No. Well – sort of. No. He was – nobody.”

 

“Hm,” Patrick says. “I usually go home early when they turn out to be nobody. But that's just me, I guess. I like a good night's sleep.”

 

“Yes, I can see that about you,” David says, and Patrick turns his head enough to throw David a small smile. “Do you ever....”

 

He's not sure where he's going with that. Patrick turns around, bracing his hands on the table behind him and leaning back casually. “Do I ever what?”

 

David takes a deep breath and flips to a new page in his sketchbook. “I don't know, nothing, never mind.”

 

“No, go ahead, ask me,” Patrick says. “I'm curious now.”

 

“I really don't know,” David admits. “I had a thought, but it's – more of a nonverbal, conceptual type of thing.”

 

_Do you ever want to change?_ is a stupid question, right? Everyone wants that at least some of the time. Even Patrick, who seems to be the most supremely steady, even-tempered, consistent human being David's ever met, must know what it feels like to be ready to leave something behind. That's just basic adulting, David's pretty sure.

 

“Ah,” Patrick says, bemused. “Yeah, I – can't help you there. Conceptual isn't really my wheelhouse.”

 

Mostly just to lighten the mood, David turns on his sunniest smile and says, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

 

Patrick laughs, but it's unexpectedly awkward. Patrick's never awkward. He half-turns back to the boxes and says as gruffly as a man with very little lower register can manage, “Happy.”

 

“Happy,” David repeats blankly. It's an English word, and he could locate it in a dictionary, even use it in a sentence, and yet somehow it still doesn't make any sense like this, coming from Patrick.

 

Patrick shrugs. “I mean – I guess there's other – Like to have a family. Maybe retire early enough that I can do a little traveling while my health is good. But basically I just....” He shrugs again and seems to forget that he's pretending to be unpacking the box. He just holds onto the open flap with one hand, looking off at nothing.

 

“That's a good answer,” David says. “I feel like that's...attainable. Right?”

 

“Hoping,” Patrick says briskly. “Hey, so, did you e-mail the people about the wifi?”

 

“That feels like more of a Patrick job,” David says.

 

“Of course it does,” Patrick says. “Fine, you unpack these, then.”

 

They pass each other coming around the edge of the counter, Patrick headed for the computer and David for the manual labor, and they're far enough apart that they aren't forced to make eye contact, but close enough that David's elbow brushes Patrick's arm in transit. “Sorry,” Patrick says.

 

“It's fine--” David begins.

 

“No, I. I'm sorry.” David pauses on the other side of the counter, looking across at this person, this friend-person who – who belongs here, who's as at home in David's space as David is – this thing that David's never had before. A partner. “I'm sorry that, um. That he wasn't what you wanted him to be.”

 

It takes David a second to remember who they're talking about, and another second to remember that he rolled up today wearing dark D&G glasses like someone's slightly nefarious widow-slash-possible-murderer. Like he's been crying, instead of just lying awake all night having a quiet, perfectly mature existential crisis about his attraction to exploitative men. “I'm actually fine with it,” David assures him. “He really...wasn't my type.”

 

“Okay,” Patrick says. “Good. I mean-- that's good. For you. You know what, I'm just gonna-- “ He gestures toward the keyboard.

 

“Okay,” David says, unable to hold back a little smirk. Patrick can be awfully cute when he's trying to be supportive and professional at the same time. Well. Patrick can't not be cute, most of the time. “That's sweet of you, though,” David says. “To worry about me.”

 

Patrick snorts a little, eyes intent on the laptop screen. “I don't worry about you, David, I'm pretty sure you can handle yourself. I just-- You know. I meant – better luck next time.”

 

“Right,” David says. “Next time.”

 

 

 

 


End file.
